Annual mailing
On the eighth day of Listmas my data showed to me eight annual mailings…
This post is a bookend to day 3’s “Sending 3 Times Daily” on the effect of overmailing. Today, we’re going to talk about undermailing. Mickey Chandler, Sending 3 Times Daily, Spamtacular (2017), https://www.spamtacular.com/2017/12/11/sending-three-times-daily/ (last visited May 27, 2024).
Like many people, my mailboxes are overflowing this time of the year. A big part of that is just plain regular spam. “Legitimate mailers” are not the only people who ramp things up. Anecdotally, the number of “have Santa send your kid a letter” emails in my mailbox would beg to differ if you might think that’s not happening, too.
So, spammers are busy mailing people who haven’t asked for the mail. There is also a lot of mail going out that I might have asked for, but honestly, I can’t remember having done so. That’s generally a problem. If someone who works in commercial email and pays attention to these kinds of things can’t remember whether he legitimately signed up for a list, can you imagine what people who DON’T pay attention to such things are thinking?
I could cover a variety of topics, but others have written on the subject before. For instance, see the Return Path blog post on undermailing for several of them. Jen Ribble, Email Send Frequency: The Effects of Undermailing, The Return Path Blog (2015), https://web.archive.org/web/20150716061109/http://blog.returnpath.com/blog/jen-ribble/email-send-frequency%3A-the-effects-of-undermailing (last visited May 27, 2024).
But the important thing to remember is how those things play off each other. If you look at Return Path’s list, several items have definite interplay. I don’t remember if I ever signed up for several of the mailings that I suddenly see around the holidays and never see again for another year. For most people, that means that they’ll click the “This is Spam” button. So, a lack of consistent mailing results in higher complaint rates, which leads to inconsistent inbox placement and potential blocking for the rest of the messages sent by that sender.
Additionally, people change addresses throughout the year, domains lose their owners and sometimes change hands completely. So, in addition to the issues that come up with a single domain, you need to worry about spamtraps, which lead to the problems outlined in the post a few days ago on SBLs.
What’s the lesson here? Just like with the problem of overmailing, marketers need to find a good cadence and stick with it. The pressure to dig deeper into the list and send mail to people who have not heard from the company in the last 6-12 months (or more) should be resisted. Tell people what they’re getting into, and then stick with that promise.
I’ll thank you, and so will many other mailbox owners.
“That’s our business model!“
“We’ve gotta make our numbers,”
5 SBLs,
4 authentication failures,
sending 3 times daily,
2 purchased lists,
and that’s why they’re having slow delivery.
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